That’s what Sally L. Stroup of the Department of Education says about the first changes in ten years to the way that financial aid is dispersed to college students. Meanwhile, the numbers don’t lie. Up to a million lower-income students are going to get their grants reduced at a time of economic downturn when they are least equipped to deal with it. Some 80,000 will lose their grants entirely. These are my friends, people I know and work with and study with and talk to. These are kids who just want to go to college, damnit, and they already have to deal with the huge costs and expenses of ever-rising tuition and formulas that over-estimate their income so as to screw them over. These are people with dreams just like everyone else, people who work hard to get by and study so that they can have a better life, contribute to our country, make the world better. And the administration can’t have that, nooo.

The current administration has perfected the art of doublespeak and the Orwellian behaviors that it signifies. I will leave no child behind, or noble president says, and then he cuts funding, first to Head Start, and now to this. You know what? Fuck you, President Bush.